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Friday, February 13th, 2026 12:00 pm
The image originated from a social media account that describes itself as "an AI-powered meme engine that turns stupidity into content."
Friday, February 13th, 2026 11:00 am
Posts purporting to show unredacted images of President Donald Trump with girls spread online.
Friday, February 13th, 2026 03:40 am
A remarkable Roman mosaic found in Rutland turns out to tell a forgotten version of the Trojan War. Rather than Homer’s famous epic, it reflects a lost Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, featuring vivid scenes of Achilles and Hector. Its artistic patterns echo designs from across the ancient Mediterranean, some dating back 800 years before the mosaic was made. The discovery suggests Roman Britain was deeply plugged into the wider classical world.
Friday, February 13th, 2026 08:00 am
Friday, February 13th, 2026 01:04 am
An AI-altered image placed a gun in the hands of a social media influencer who had nothing to do with the February 2026 mass shooting.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 11:00 pm
Up and find myself pretty well, and so to the office, and there all the morning. Rose at noon and home to dinner in my green chamber, having a good fire. Thither there came my wife’s brother and brought Mary Ashwell with him, whom we find a very likely person to please us, both for person, discourse, and other qualitys. She dined with us, and after dinner went away again, being agreed to come to us about three weeks or a month hence. My wife and I well pleased with our choice, only I pray God I may be able to maintain it.
Then came an old man from Mr. Povy, to give me some advice about his experience in the stone, which I [am] beholden to him for, and was well pleased with it, his chief remedy being Castle soap in a posset.
Then in the evening to the office, late writing letters and my Journall since Saturday, and so home to supper and to bed.
Friday, February 13th, 2026 12:36 am
Nothing in the Epstein files directly links Lifetouch to the late sex offender's criminal activity.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 04:00 pm
Maconaquah had a decision to make. She could continue the life she had known for over 58 years, or return to civilization with her siblings.
Born in Rhode Island in 1773 as Frances Slocum, she was captured by Delaware Indians in November 1778 from her home in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She was taken west by the Delaware into what would later become the states of Ohio and Indiana. She married a Delaware Indian who mistreated her, and after leaving him, she returned to her parents. While living with them, she encountered a Miami Indian man named Shepocanah, who had been wounded in battle. Shepocanah was nursed back to health, and before his death, Frances’s father gave both Frances and her mother to him. Frances married Shepocanah and was given the Miami name Maconaquah.
Shepocanah later became a Miami chief but relinquished the role after losing his hearing. He was known to white settlers as Deaf Man. Shepocanah and Maconaquah lived along the Mississinewa River near present-day Peru, Indiana. They had four children: two sons who died young and two daughters. Their daughter Kekemosheshwah had no children and died on March 13, 1847, four days after her mother. Their second daughter, Ozahshinquah, also known as Jane, died on January 25, 1877, leaving her husband and nine children surviving. Shepocanah died around 1833.
In 1835, a traveler passing through the Mississinewa River area spoke with Maconaquah, and she revealed that she had been born a white child. Although she no longer spoke English, she reported that her name had been Slocum and that her family were Quakers living along the Susquehanna River. The traveler sent a letter recounting Maconaquah’s story to the postmaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two years later, the letter was published in a Lancaster newspaper, where it came to the attention of Joseph Slocum, one of Frances’s brothers.
In September 1837, Joseph, along with his brother Isaac and sister Mary, traveled with interpreters to Deaf Man's Village and spoke with Maconaquah. After nearly 58 years, they did not recognize her, but they were able to identify her by a damaged forefinger on her left hand, injured during childhood. Although they asked her to return with them, she declined and lived the rest of her life with her family. She died on March 9, 1847, in Deaf Man’s Village.
This cemetery is not the original location of her burial, as the grave marker notes. Her grave and those of her family were originally located at Deaf Man’s Village along the Mississinewa River but were relocated in 1965 when the Army Corp of Engineers built the Mississinewa Reservoir. 80 graves and the entire town of Somerset was relocated to create the reservoir.
Many state properties and other sites are named in honor of Frances Slocum, and one is named after Maconaquah, in both Indiana and Pennsylvania. These include:
- Frances Slocum Elementary School, Marion, Indiana
- Frances Slocum Neighborhood, Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Frances Slocum State Forest, Lagro, Indiana
- Frances Slocum State Park, Wyoming, Pennsylvania
- Frances Slocum State Recreation Area, Pioneer, Indiana
- Frances Slocum Trail / County Road 275 E, Butler Township, Indiana
- Old Slocum Trail (road), Somerset, Indiana
- Maconaquah High School, Bunker Hill, Indiana
Ultimately, the decision she made was to remain Maconaquah and stay with her daughters and grandchildren. History, however, would remember her as Frances Slocum.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 07:44 pm
Harrison died after her father's gun went off in his hands. A Texas grand jury declined to indict him in connection with the shooting in 2025.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 06:41 pm
Social media users claimed U.S. marshals seized the presidential daughter's passport after secret testimony by her stepmother, Melania Trump.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 02:00 pm
Reverend Lowery Allen McGrew and his wife Clara moved to Sierra Leone in 1896 to serve as missionaries under the aegis of the Woman’s Missionary Board, a protestant missionary association. Both originally from Ohio, the Reverend and Mrs. McGrew settled in Taiama in an outpost of a larger missionary station in Rotifunk. Sierra Leone had been a particular interest for American missionaries since the revolt on The Amistad, which saw the enslaved persons that had survived through their subsequent time in Connecticut returned to Sierra Leone.
The year 1896 also saw the British establish a Protectorate of Sierra Leone, expanding the borders of their century-old colony in Freetown over the hinterlands. To pay for the administration of the colony, and to force the population into the money economy, the British imposed a hut tax in 1898. The deeply unpopular tax, seen as both an imposition on the people and an attack on traditional sovereignty, ignited the Hut Tax War of 1898.
Presumably targeted for their association with colonial authorities, most of the missionaries in the war-affected areas were killed in a quick series of attacks in May 1898. Those killed included not only the McGrews, but also local missionaries and about a thousand of their followers. The British colonial authorities responded with force, and the rebellion was crushed by the end of the year. New missionaries had re-established themselves at Taiama and elsewhere by November of 1898.
The marker commemorating the killing of the missionaries in Taiama reads “On this rock the American missionaries Rev. L.A. McGrew & his wife Clara McGrew were massacred May 9, 1898.” However, locals report the actual site of the killing was closer to the riverbank a few yards upstream.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 12:00 pm
Who would think that the last emperor of France, Napoleon III, had found his way to a quiet town in England? Well, following his passing and then his son's death in the Zulu War, his wife Eugene bought a house and came to live in Farnborough. She had an abbey built, complete with the church and Imperial Mausoleum, where the family are at rest. With the gothic styling of the buildings, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in France! The church and crypt have been extensively refurbished, Sunday Mass being shared on the abbey's Youtube channel, albeit without the aroma of the incense.
Today, the abbey is home to a small Benedictine community whose spiritual life is supported by their guest house, farm and printing press. You can visit on Saturdays at 3pm, details on the abbey website.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 10:20 am
It’s easy to miss the two piles of stone rubble in Prairie Moraine County Park. The only clue that there’s something unusual here is a sign saying, “Historical Site.”
A house for leprosy sufferers once stood here. It was built in 1896 for a resident of the nearby County Poor House, a Norwegian immigrant named Thomas. At this time, there was no cure for leprosy and treatment involved isolation. Thomas was probably the only resident of the house and, after his death in 1902, the house rapidly deteriorated.
Despite the fear of leprosy at the time, it was apparently common for Thomas to have visitors and guests. These included those bringing food and supplies, local farmers paying social calls to play cards, as well as journalists and county officials. After Thomas died, the house was an attraction to local curiosity seekers, which probably contributed to the building’s rapid deterioration.
Leprosy is an infectious disease caused by bacteria and is associated with skin lesions, nerve damage, loss of sensation, blindness and muscular weakness. The first effective treatment for leprosy became available after World War II.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 04:00 pm
Some social media users suggested the acid was to make bodies disappear.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 09:14 am
Long before agriculture, humans were transforming Europe’s wild landscapes. Advanced simulations show that hunting and fire use by Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers reshaped forests and grasslands in measurable ways. By reducing populations of giant herbivores, people indirectly altered how dense vegetation became. The findings challenge the idea that prehistoric Europe was an untouched natural world.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 02:00 pm
The photograph was taken in 2016 and shows the former president with late chef Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 12:00 pm
Bannon, a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, also conducted an hours-long interview with the disgraced financier in 2019.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 11:00 am
The video aimed to capitalize on unsubstantiated claims that the musician wore a bulletproof vest at the Super Bowl and the Grammys.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 10:11 am
Back in my schooldays, there was a neighbour of ours who used to prep his engine for departure. Every morning he'd start his car, despite the car obviously not wanting to start. It would take several noisy attempts to turn the engine over. Once turned over, it would sputter a few times, and stop. Only for this process to be repeated several times. Then eventually the engine would kick and roar into life, and the neighbour would spend several minutes revving it up and down. Then he'd leave the engine running noisily for about 15 minutes, presumably while he went back inside and had breakfast or something, so that it was nice and warmed up. And finally, about half an hour after this whole spectacle* had begun, he'd rev the engine into spitting, snarling, protesting life, and make his way out on to the street, where the sound of the engine would fade away into the distance for the next 5 minutes.
All before the time I had to get out of bed to prepare for school.
* Is it okay to call something experienced purely aurally a "spectacle"? I'm saying it is.
2026-02-12 Rerun commentary: Oh wow... I'd almost forgotten about that. And now reading it again has brought the trauma back. Whether I'm talking about Serron being sensible or the neighbour noisily starting the car is left as an exercise for the reader.
Thursday, February 12th, 2026 08:00 am